The Suffering Body and the Absolute Other: The ethics of encounter in Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Faculty Member at Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract

This article offers a Levinasian reading of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, arguing that the novel can be read not merely as a romantic or body-centric narrative, but as an ethical text about encountering the Other. Drawing on Levinas's concepts—including the Face, the Absolute Other, asymmetrical responsibility, suffering, relational incompleteness, and language as response—it contends that the beloved's body is not an object of cognition or possession, but the scene of ethical demand. The narrator's unnamed and genderless status, narrative ruptures, and focus on Louise's suffering body transform the love relationship into an ethical encounter that never culminates in appropriating or fully comprehending the Other. The act of writing the body constitutes a failed yet inescapable response to the Other's summons—perpetually incomplete, yet precisely from this incompleteness Levinasian ethics emerges. By suspending the narrator's name and gender, the novel prevents identity consolidation and subject-domination, enabling the emergence of Levinas's "Absolute Other." Louise's suffering body appears not as an object of desire or knowledge, but as the Face's manifestation and the source of ethical demand, summoning the narrator to infinite, asymmetrical responsibility. The narrator's endeavor to write Louise's body results not in knowing or possessing the Other, but in incompleteness, distance, and ongoing responsiveness. Thus, Winterson represents love not as appropriation, but as ethical responsibility toward the Other—a responsibility that finds meaning precisely in the inability to fully understand or represent the Other.

Graphical Abstract

The Suffering Body and the Absolute Other: The ethics of encounter in Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Abbasi, M. & Asghari, M. (2024). Investigation of the face and the basis of its justification in the moral philosophy of Levinas, Metaphysics (University of Isfahan). 16 (38), 59-79. (in Persian) https://doi.org/10.22108/mph.2024.139551.1521
Berry, E. (2018). Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique, Contemporary Women’s Writing. Oxford. XII (3), 391-400. https://doi.org/10.1093/cwwrit/vpx011
Critchley, S. (1999). The Original Traumatism; Levinas and psychoanalysis Dooley, in (M., & Kearney, R. Eds.) Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Continental Philosophy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203450833
Davis, C. (2007). Levinas: An introduction. Polity Press.
Jacobs, C. (2018). Bullets and Barter: The Force of Love Speech in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 59(4): 481- 491. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2018.1427545
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1961)
Levinas, E. (1978). Existence and Existents (A. Lingis, Trans.). Martinus Nijhoff
Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo (R. A. Cohen, Trans.). Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1982)
Levinas, E. (1993). Collected philosophical papers (A. Lingis, Trans.). Martinus Nijhoff
Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise, then being, or beyond essence (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1974)
Maioli, F. (2009). Palimpsests: The female body as a text in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 16(2), 143–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506808101763
Olia, M. (2009). Discovering the other alongside Levinas. Tehran: Ney Publishing House. (in Persian)
Rainsford, D., & Woods, T. (Eds.). Simon Critchley “The Original Traumatism: Levinas and Psychoanalysis” (1999). Critical Ethics: Text, theory and responsibility. Macmillan Press.
Weder, N. (2016). Rewriting the Body: A Critique of Current Readings of Gender and Identity in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, English Academy Review: A Journal of English Studies. 33(2), 7-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2016.1249680
Winterson, J. (1992). Written on the body. Vintage.
Send comment about this article
CAPTCHA Image
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 20, Issue 55 - Serial Number 55
Articles
Issue 55, Summer 2026
July 2026
Pages 287-304

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics